Page 8 of Signal No. Us

“Sayang,” Allan said quietly, echoing his father without meaning to.

“We have a plan,” Cora said. “Small, nothing big. Clean it, fix it, make it useful again, DRRM meetings, community screenings, this and that. All we need is,” she waved a hand vaguely at the photos, at the peeling paint, at the whole idea of restoration “—someone who still knows how to do this.”

Allan understood, with the particular dread of someone watching a trap close very slowly and very lovingly, exactly where this was going.

“Ma.”

“I’m not saying anything,” Cora said, completely unconvincingly.

“You’re absolutely saying something.”

“Robby,” she said instead, pivoting with the smoothness of someone who had spent thirty years managing a faculty room, “tell him what the plan is.”

Robby wiped his hands, looking, Allan noted, unfairly, like he’d rehearsed this.

“The barangay’s chasing a grant,” he said. “Community resilience funding. We need a building, a house, that we can use when a storm comes: evacuation, storage, meetings, but Kapitan also wants a ‘community value’ component, to bump up the scoring.” He said the last part with the faint, tired precision of someone who had filled out too many government forms. “Cine sa Isla could work. It already has a story. It already has heart. It’s just missing a little…art.

“The grant committee does a site visit and a progress review in October,” Robby continued. “Eight weeks from now. Maybe less. They moved it up on us before. If the ‘community value’ component isn’t visibly, verifiably underway by then, mural included, Kapitan says we lose our slot in this funding cycle, and the whole evacuation-building plan gets pushed back at least two years. So, no pressure,” he said, with the exact, unconvincing lightness of a man who meant the opposite.

“And you thought of me,” Allan said, “because…?”

“Because I happen to know someone who used to draw,” Robby stated, matter-of-factly, and there, barely there, gone as fast as it came, something flickered across his face that wasn’t quite a smile and wasn’t quite guilt. “And because I don’t have anyone else left to boss around.”

“Charming,” Allan said. “Very compelling pitch.”

“I don’t really need to pitch it,” Robby said. “You just need a reason not to rush straight back to Manila.”

The table went very quiet in that specific way that meant everyone had heard it and was pretending not to.

Allan opened his mouth to say something dismissive, a joke, a deflection, his usual emergency exit, and found, embarrassingly, that nothing came out.

“Just think about it,” Cora said, gentler than she’d been all morning, sliding the folder toward him. “You don’t have a job right now. You have the time. And—” she tapped the photo of his lolo on the scaffold “—you can use to distract yourself while you think about your next move.”

Allan looked at the photograph a long moment. His lolo’s grin. His father’s careful, serious hands.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, which everyone at the table correctly understood to mean yes, obviously, but let me pretend I have a choice for at least twelve more hours.

Tita Becky was already elbowing Tita Yolanda. “I told you, didn’t I? He has a reason to stay.”

“No betting on this,” Allan said quickly. “Absolutely no betting on this.”

“Who said anything about a bet?” Tita Yolanda said, folding her list of eligible men back into her bag with the patience of someone who fully intended to bring it up again the following week.

Robby caught Allan’s eye across the table, amused, a little cautious, like he wasn’t sure if he’d overstepped by asking at all.

Allan looked away first and hated himself a little for how fast his pulse was going for someone who was allegedly just eating rice.

“Wait — before you run off,” Tita Gemma said, sliding her phone across the table like she was serving another plate of rice. “We also made you a...paano ba ’to... a love ad.”

Allan looked down. A grid of shirtless torsos glowed up at him under a bright, unmistakable yellow icon. His stomach dropped somewhere near the floor.

“Tita. Tita, is that⁠—”

“Grindr, gryyyynduh, eh basta G app,” Tita Yolanda said, visibly proud of the pronunciation. “The sakristan told us this is like Facebook for the badings. You put in your, ano, your specifications, and the men just—” she made a sweeping gesture “—arrive. Very convenient. Parang Jollibee delivery.”

“It’s not— that’s not how it—” Allan’s ears were on fire.

“Some of them are so close,” Tita Becky said, squinting at the screen, genuinely baffled. “Zero meters, sabi dito. Zero! Nasaan sila? Nakatago ba sa ilalim ng mesa?”